


distraction

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Series: Star Wars Works [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: M/M, mention of canon amputation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6836263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Millennium Falcon sails into Lando's city and the last ten years of his life go up in smoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	distraction

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by islandswithoutrivers on tumblr. :)

The Millennium Falcon sails into Lando’s city and the last ten years of his life go up in smoke. All he’s left with is a souped-up freighter that used to be his, a grieving Wookie, a furious Rebel leader, a traumatized kid, and a sick wash of guilt churning around in the pit of his stomach. Cloud City, evacuated and occupied. His people scattered to hell. Han Solo given up to the Hutts, and for nothing. It’s a lot to lose in twenty-four hours.   
  
The first thing he does after they escape is promise Organa he'll help her. He'll do whatever it takes to rescue Han, and he'll do whatever's in his power to help the Rebellion, since the Empire just took a goddamn torch to his efforts to stay neutral and keep his people safe.   
  
“If you keep your word for as long as it takes to get us to the base, I’ll consider holding you to it,” Organa tells him, looking like she wishes Chewbacca had ripped his arms off after all.  
  
Lando likes her. He thinks he sees what Han saw in her, apart from the obvious. She’s the type to gather up the threads of her grief and fear and forge them into a kind of clean fury, something that’ll let her get things done. Chewie sticks by her like she’s blood-kin and Lando’s a baby-killer, even though Lando knew Chewbacca years before he and Han ever met.   
  
But if Lando feels the temptation to give into self-pity, all he has to do is look at the kid to feel it ebb back into low-burning anger. The kid fell off the edge of Lando’s city and into Lando’s arms right after the Emperor’s attack dog cut off his hand, and Lando’s the one who sicced Vader on him. He didn’t have a choice-–he’d do it again, if he had to-–but seeing the consequences huddle over his wounded arm like a hurt animal still feels damning.   
  
He’s going to personally see to it that the Empire crumbles into dust, he vows privately, before pulling a chair up to the kid’s side and dealing him into a round of liar’s cut, or corellian spike, or flipping on Chewie’s fucking dejarik holos. Anything to get the kid’s mind off things.   
  
The kid loses three rounds of liar’s cut in a row. He’s clumsy with the cards, and the dice shake awkwardly in his single hand. “I’m right-handed,” Luke comments, staring down at the cards. “Or I guess I was.”   
  
Lando doesn’t say they can fit him up with a prosthetic when they land, because Organa says so every time she flinches at the empty air by Luke’s right wrist, her jaw tightening. Instead he says: “My sister broke her arm when she was learning to write. Had to start all over with the other hand, and by the time she healed up she could write just as well with the one as the other.”   
  
“Yeah,” Luke says, still frowning at his cards. “Yeah, my Uncle Aimo had the same thing happen to him-–except he lost a couple fingers in a sand grinder, and the season wasn’t over, so. He had to learn how to do it the other way.” It’s the first piece of information Luke’s volunteered about himself that wasn’t to do with the Force or ghosts or long-lost Jedi knights.   
  
“Sand grinder, huh?” Lando keeps his voice easy, lets the dice roll out of his hand and onto the table. “Your people moisture farmers?”   
  
“Going back about two hundred years,” Luke says with a nod. He makes a face at the dice, but plays his card. “I’m the first Skywalker to leave Tattooine since my-–” his voice cracks. A bitter smile crosses his mouth. “Since my father.” 

Lando considers this, puts together a couple pieces he’s noted in the last few days: a couple cryptic comments from the astromech, Chewie glaring at him for asking too many questions, Organa gripping Luke’s left hand, whispering fierce things not meant for Lando’s ears, Luke holding onto her like she was the only rope left in the galaxy. He asks: “Your father the one who raised you?”   
  
Luke shakes his head, his eyes distant and turned-inward again.   
  
“Mine neither,” Lando says, and puts his cards face-down on the table. “My mom and my aunts raised me up together. Your buddy Han grew up in a  orphanage, he ever tell you that? But he loved this local kingpin like a mother. She used to send care packages to every filthy watering hole in the system, in the hopes that Han would stop by.” Luke’s looking a little less unfocused, his eyes trained on Lando. Lando lets himself grin. “I thought it was sweet until I realized she was smuggling him Corellian spice in those care packages, and expected him to send her back seventy percent of the profits. I guess it was sweet, for a couple of pirates.”   
  
“Han was involved in the spice trade?” Luke asks, and he actually sounds a little outraged, his face going pink.   
  
Lando shrugs. “Not glitterstim or ryll, or anything like that. But callwin? Myriander? Sure.” 

“Listen, you might _think_ callwin’s harmless, but I knew plenty of old-timers in Mos Eisley who were so dependent they couldn’t function anymore,” Luke tells him, resting his elbow on the table so he can lean in and glare at Lando a little easier. “My cousin Pera was almost thrown out of the Academy for using callwin, and my Aunt Jmi made her volunteer at the detox center in Mos Espa for a year, before she’d let her go back.”   
  
“Yeah?” Lando says, smiling at him. “Tell me more about your Aunt Jmi.” 

Luke tells him all about his aunts and uncles and their small-town moral fortitude, his ragged collection of cousins on a desert planet in the middle of nowhere, and when he talks about the aunt and uncle that raised him his eyes go red and his voice gets soft, but he doesn’t drift away. Eventually they pick the card game back up while they talk, and Luke beats him soundly at desert draw. He even cracks a smile over it.   
  
When Lando finally gets up to spell Chewie in the cockpit, Luke grabs his elbow. “Hey,” he says, looking straight into Lando’s eyes, his gaze blue and eerily sharp, so piercing that Lando feels _cut_. “Thanks.”   
  
“I’m not sure what you mean, kid,” Lando says, mouth going dry.   
  
“You were distracting me,” Luke says, still looking at Lando with that frightening focus, like he can see right down into Lando's soul, and is trying to make up his mind about it. “It helped.”   
  
“Anytime,” Lando says honestly, and Luke gives him a minute smile before letting go of his arm.  
  
Lando feels the phantom press of fingers on his elbow for the rest of his shift. Let it go, he tells himself sternly. It's not the time or the place for thoughts like that. He spends the next few hours trying to bottle up the memory of Luke’s Jedi stare, tries to store it somewhere safe and out of sight.   
  
Somehow he never quite manages, and that’s the memory he carries with him to the heart of the Rebellion, to Jabba’s palace, to the suicide run in the sky over Endor. Luke Skywalker, just looking at him. 

 


End file.
